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Prep: A Novel

Average rating: 4/5

Based on 44 ratings

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Prep: A Novel

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Random House Publishing Group | November 22, 2005 | Trade Paperback

Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of-and, ultimately, a participant in-their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she's a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee's experiences-complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


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Reviews

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      helpful to you?

    Rating: 4/5

    Magnificent Book.

    Jessica Curtis

    4 years ago

    Prep was an interesting read. It is quite long yet a book that I would recommend. It was great to see from the eye of a not-so-perfect teen where endings aren't always great. Magnificent Book.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 4/5

    These types of people really do exist!

    La Bohème

    4 years ago

    I really enjoyed it. It was well written and although the character had an annoying habit of demoralizing herself, I was able to have a better understanding of why she is the way that she is. Also, boarding school life is one of those "another world" things and I enjoyed knowing a little more about it.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 5/5

    Amazing book.

    nadine .

    5 years ago

    Actually Curtis Sittenfield is A man just to let whoever it was know ...because someone had mentioned thats shes a "he"....anyways her 2 books are remarkable. I honestly think she should continue writing she just has that magical mind that can just expand and expand as the book gets near the end.
    Well Done Curtis!
    Your a great writer keep the books coming! =>

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?
    Kristen

    Rating: 1/5

    Prep?

    Kristen

    7 years ago

    I hated Prep. There. I said it. Lee Fiora was monotone, and though the writing was pretty good, I was disgusted by how Lee just was begging for sex the whole book-how her life was bad-she was really negative. And she was like, Oh, I hate my parents, because they aren't rich-oh, I'm treated differently because I'm on scholarship, oh, I'm racist- It got really annoying, because she was whining the whole book about how bad her life was. I thought she would improve, though she was still a whiner by the end of the book. Plus, nothing ever happened between her and Cross-there was no question of why he ever came on his nightly visits, there was no influence that sex was wrong-and even Martha was like, Who cares?
    Yeah, what a great friend.
    I would suggest you should never read this book if you want to know about boarding school, because it is about sex.

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From the Publisher

Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of-and, ultimately, a participant in-their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she's a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee's experiences-complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Jacket

Curtis Sittenfeld''s debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school''s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.
As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of-and, ultimately, a participant in-their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she''s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.
Ultimately, Lee''s experiences-complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.

"From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Curtis Sittenfeld won the Seventeen magazine fiction writing contest in 1992, at age sixteen, and The Mississippi Review's annual fiction contest in 1998. Her writing has appeared in Fast Company, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, and Real Simple, and on public radio's This American Life. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she is the recipient of a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. Sittenfeld was the 2002-2003 writer in residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., where she continues to work as a part-time as an English teacher.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bookclub Guide

1. How does Prep differ from other books about teenagers you've read?
Reviews have cited the book as an unsentimental view of high
school and adolescence-do you agree? How does Lee Fiora's point
of view relate to your own high school experience?

2. Throughout the novel, Lee describes herself as an outsider, partly
because of her scholarship-student status. How does Sittenfeld develop
this theme of fitting in racially and financially? What kind
of difficulties, both overt and subtle, do Little, Sin-Jun, Darden, and
other minority students encounter at Ault, and how does their outsider
status differ from Lee's?

3. How does the school-wide game of Assassin temporarily transform
Lee? How do her interactions with her classmates during this game
empower her? Explore her guilt in "killing" McGrath.

4. Many readers and reviewers of Prep have described Lee as a passive
character. When is Lee submissive, and when does she act on her
desires, even if subconsciously? Does her level of assertion change
by the end of the novel?

5. Lee experiences friction with her parents when they visit Ault for
Parents' Weekend. How has her relationship with them changed
since she left for boarding school? Her father states, "When you
started at Ault . . . I said to myself, I'll bet there are a lot of kids
who'd think real highly of themselves going to a place like that.
And I thought, but I'm glad Lee has a good head on her shoulders.
Well, I was wrong. I'll say that now. We made a mistake to let you
go" (202). Do you think Lee has changed in the way her father
claims she has?

6. Many reviewers have mentioned that Prep feels autobiographical
and reads like a memoir, but Sittenfeld denies that her novel
closely follows her life. Why, then, do you think Prep comes across
as so authentic and personal?

7. Is Angela Varizi, The New York Times reporter who interviews Lee,
manipulative in her interview? Do you think Lee intended, even if
subconsciously, to give a negative picture of Ault?

8. During Lee's final conversation with Cross Sugarman, he tells her,
"You'll be happier in college. . . . I think it's good you're going to a
big school, somewhere less conformist than Ault" (380). Why does
Cross think this, and do you agree with him? How do you envision
Lee changing after high school?

9. Reviewers have compared Sittenfeld to other authors in the boardingschool-
novel genre, including J. D. Salinger, John Knowles, and
Tobias Wolff. How does Prep differ from those other novels? How
does a female perspective affect Prep?

10. How does Lee's adolescence compare to your own? Which of her
high school experiences resonate with you most?

Trade Paperback

448 Pages, 5.25 x 8.01 x 1 in

November 22, 2005

Random House Publishing Group

English


081297235X
9780812972351

From the Critics

"Curtis Sittenfeld is a young writer with a crazy amount of talent. Her sharp and economical prose reminds us of Joan Didion and Tobias Wolff. Like them, she has a sly and potent wit, which cuts unexpectedly-but often-through the placid surface of her prose. Her voice is strong and clear, her moral compass steady; I'd believe anything she told me."
-Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

"Speaking in a voice as authentic as Salinger's Holden Caulfield and McCullers' Mick Kelly, Curtis Sittenfeld's Lee Fiora tells unsugared truths about adolescence, alienation, and the sociology of privilege. Prep's every sentence rings true. Sittenfeld is a rising star."
-Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True

"In her deeply involving first novel, Curtis Sittenfeld invites us inside the fearsome echo chamber of adolescent self-consciousness. But Prep is more than a coming of age story-it's a study of social class in America, and Sittenfeld renders it with astonishing deftness and clarity."
-Jennifer Egan, author of Look at Me

"Sittenfeld ensconces the reader deep in the world of the Ault School and the churning mind of Lee Fiora (a teenager as complex and nuanced as those of Salinger), capturing every vicissitude of her life with the precision of a brilliant documentary and the delicacy and strength of a poem."
-Thisbe Nissen, author of Osprey Island

"Open Prep and you'll travel back in time: Sittenfeld's novel is funny, smart, poignant, and tightly woven together, with a very appealing sense of melancholy."
-Jill A. Davis, author of Girls' Poker Night

"Prep does something considerable in the realm of discussing class in American culture. The ethnography on adolescence is done in pitch-perfect detail. Stunning and lucid."
-Matthew Klam, author of Sam the Cat

Funny, excruciatingly honest, improbably sexy, and studded with hard-won, eccentric wisdom about high school, heartbreak, and social privilege. One of the most impressive debut novels in recent memory."
-Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children and Election


From the Hardcover edition.

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